As electricity demand grows — driven by data centers, electric vehicles, heat pumps, industrial decarbonization, and other factors — expanding transmission capacity is essential to deliver electricity from where it is produced to where it is needed. While improvements, such as distributed generation and local efficiency help, essentially every credible study (e.g., National Transmission Needs Study of the U.S. Department of Energy) finds that the nation must roughly double its regional and interregional transmission capacity before about 2050. Most current regulatory frameworks and incentives favor local upgrades over larger-scale transmission expansion, which creates bottlenecks that incremental policy changes have alleviated only marginally.

The Consortium to Expand Transmission Capacity (ExTx) is studying the legal and regulatory reforms that are needed to unlock the transmission grid’s full potential and enable a resilient, decarbonized energy future.

Initial support of the ExTx Consortium has been provided by an inital grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. ExTx Consortium members continue to seek additional support for the proposed work.